01/10/2013 18:35
Chemical weapons inspectors cross into Syria
An advance group of international inspectors arrived in Syria on Tuesday to begin the ambitious task of overseeing the destruction of President Bashar Assad's chemical weapons program, kicking off a mission that must navigate the country's bloody civil war as well as the international spotlight, The Associated Press reported.
Twenty inspectors from a Netherlands-based chemical weapons watchdog crossed into Syria from neighboring Lebanon on their way to Damascus to begin their complex mission of finding, dismantling and ultimately destroying an estimated 1,000-ton chemical arsenal.
The experts have about nine months to complete the task, which has been endorsed by a U.N. Security Council resolution that calls for Syria's chemical stockpile to be eliminated by mid-2014. It is the shortest deadline that experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have ever faced in any nation, and their first mission in a country at war.
Upon arrival in Damascus, the inspectors are expected to meet with Foreign Ministry officials later Tuesday.